| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: is the pet name which I give him when we are alone.
And I wait for the fruit of all these sacrifices which remain a secret
between God, myself, and you. On motherhood I have staked enormously;
my credit account is now too large, I fear I shall never receive full
payment. To it I look for employment of my energy, expansion of my
heart, and the compensation of a world of joys. Pray Heaven I be not
deceived! It is a question of all my future and, horrible thought, of
my virtue.
XXI
LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE L'ESTORADE
June.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Art of War by Sun Tzu: legendary personage who is said to have bestowed it on Chang
Liang (d. 187 B.C.) in an interview on a bridge. But here again,
the style is not that of works dating from the Ch`in or Han
period. The Han Emperor Kuang Wu [25-57 A.D.] apparently quotes
from it in one of his proclamations; but the passage in question
may have been inserted later on, in order to prove the
genuineness of the work. We shall not be far out if we refer it
to the Northern Sung period [420-478 A.D.], or somewhat earlier.
6. LI WEI KUNG WEN TUI, in 3 sections. Written in the form
of a dialogue between T`ai Tsung and his great general Li Ching,
it is usually ascribed to the latter. Competent authorities
The Art of War |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: was giving himself up to a faithless, morose, envious, disagreeable being,
hurtful to his estate, hurtful to his bodily health, and still more hurtful
to the cultivation of his mind, than which there neither is nor ever will
be anything more honoured in the eyes both of gods and men. Consider this,
fair youth, and know that in the friendship of the lover there is no real
kindness; he has an appetite and wants to feed upon you:
'As wolves love lambs so lovers love their loves.'
But I told you so, I am speaking in verse, and therefore I had better make
an end; enough.
PHAEDRUS: I thought that you were only half-way and were going to make a
similar speech about all the advantages of accepting the non-lover. Why do
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